This article presents an argument, from a public health
perspective, against the use of the term `race' and for its
replacement by the term `ethnicity'. Historically, the rise of the
race concept in society was dependent on its undeserved status as an
objective scientific and biological category and was associated with
strategies of exclusion and political domination. Mainstream science
played a key role in the rise of the race concept but has since largely
abandoned it in face of evidence from population genetics. Similarly,
the public health movement has historically been concerned with
race/ethnicity as a determinant of unequal health status, but the race
term has now all but disappeared from the Australian public health
literature, where it has been replaced by the concept of ethnicity.
Ethnicity is a complex social variable, with cultural and political
dimensions, but no biological dimension. Adopting a public health
perspective on ethnicity which recognises the fluid and contested nature
of this socio-political variable, whilst seeking to make explicit its
relevance and definitional limits, allows us to dispense with the race
concept altogether, since race has no additional explanatory or
strategic value above that of ethnicity. The race term is still commonly
used, however, in general conversation and in the media. The persistence
of the race concept and of racism is difficult to explain but may be
related historically to the politics of nationalism, and in modern times
to the politics of difference and identity that characterise the modern
multicultural nation-state. Abandoning the terminology of race leaves
racism without any logical basis, and may contribute to a process of
social change, although it cannot be expected to eliminate the
phenomenon of racism.

Name: Australian Journal of Social Issues Publisher: Australian Council of Social Service Audience: Academic Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: Sociology and social work Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 Australian Council of Social
Service ISSN:0157-6321

Issue:

Date: Feb, 2000 Source Volume: 35 Source Issue: 1

Geographic:

Geographic Scope: Australia Geographic Code: 8AUST Australia

Accession Number:

61025818

Full Text:

Introduction

Race, ethnicity and culture are issues of enduring importance not
only in the social sciences, but also in public health. Public health is
the organised effort of society to protect, promote and restore the
public's health (Last, 1988) and equity of access to services and
equality of health outcomes are key concerns. A recent listing of
literature, dealing with racial and ethnic disparities in health care,
that had been published in two American medical journals over a ten year
period, filled 66 pages (Geiger, 1996). In this article, I attempt to
briefly address the following questions: firstly, what concepts, and
what distortions, hide behind the three words, `ethnicity',
`race' and `culture'; and, secondly, can the public health
community contribute some clear thinking to the `race' debate? In
the first part of this paper, it will be argued that `race' has an
undeserved status as an immutable biological variable and that
mainstream science has now abandoned the concept it helped to promote.
In the second part of the paper, I will draw on the public health
literature to justify the abandonment of the term `race' and its
replacement by the term `ethnicity' for academic purposes. In the
final part, I will examine the possible effect such a change could have
in the wider society as one tool to combat racism.

The `Race' Concept

`Race' is a word used frequently in general conversation and
in the media. It is enshrined in legislation, such as the `Racial
Discrimination Act' and appears in the titles of academic journals
such as `Race and Class'. The race concept has been reified as a
result of its widespread use in constructing boundaries that
simultaneously include and exclude people and lead to `imagined
communities' e.g. `White' Australia and `Asian' migrants
(Pettman, 1992). The English word is derived from the Latin word
`generare', which means `to beget'. It is defined in
Last's Dictionary of Epidemiology (1988) as `persons who are
relatively homogenous with respect to biologic inheritance'. The
implication is that members are biologically similar to each other and
different from the members of other racial groups.

There are a number of features that are consistently associated
with use of the term `race' in the scientific literature,
particularly in past years, but persisting up to the present time (Wolf,
1994). The first feature is the notion that if one could sort people out
into physical types, one could impute their moral character. In other
words, the sum of physical traits and temperament constitutes a stable
bio-moral `essence'. The second feature is the creation of
associated hierarchies where the people constructing the hierarchy
generally find themselves in the highest stratum with the right to
dominate others. The comments by West Australian senator, Ross
Lightfoot, that `Aboriginal people in their native state are the lowest
colour on the civilisation spectrum' (Price, 1997) are a
contemporary expression of this historical hierarchy. The third feature
follows from the first two, namely that commentaries based on racial
classifications exhibit an ethnocentric bias, a lack of objectivity in
analysis and an insensitivity to possible confounding social factors in
interpretation. This has been well demonstrated with respect to
phrenology and latterly with respect to IQ testing (Kohn, 1995; Gould,
1981).

Science, Race and History

Science has not been a disinterested observer as the ideology of
race, founded on the notion of racial classification, spread. Rather,
the power of the race concept, and its height of influence in the 19th
and the first half of the 20th century was associated with the rise of
Western science. To paraphrase Eric Wolf (1994) speaking about
anthropology, science is both offspring and creator of the human
condition and ideas about race in the 19th century not only arose from
science, but served to orient its inquiries, particularly in the field
of physical anthropology. For example, following the publication of
Charles Darwin's `Origin of Species' in 1859, the principle of
`survival of the fittest individuals' gave credence to what became
known as Social Darwinism, or `survival of the fittest race'. It
was argued that some races were better suited to survival than others
and that unfortunate races, such as Australian Aborigines, were not
suited to survival, and would die out as a result of this natural law.
The link between race theories and physical anthropology was
demonstrated in the Australian context by the battle between the Royal
College of Surgeons and the Royal Society of Tasmania for the custody of
the skull of William Lanney, the `last' Aboriginal Tasmanian male
(Horton, 1994).

Social Darwinism acted as a justification for European colonial
policies, including the colonial policies of the British in Australia,
and it was Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who founded the study
of eugenics or selective breeding, that was so influential in the first
half of this century. At that time, prominent medical scientists sought
to reframe the White Australia Policy (legislated through the 1901
Immigration Restriction Act) as an experiment in racial adaptation to
new environmental conditions (Anderson, 1997). `Tropical races'
were first deemed suitable as imported labour (e.g. the Pacific
Islanders brought to work in the Queensland canefields) and later viewed
as a potential reservoir for tropical diseases (e.g. indigenous
Australians in Northern Australia) and subjected to laws designed to
restrict their movement. The ranks of prominent eugenicists included
highly influential Australian public health practitioners, such as John
Howard Lidgett Cumpston, the first Director-General of the Federal
Health Department which was established in 1921 (Lewis, 1989).

The race concept, however, has now been confronted by the
phenomenon of genetic polymorphism and the science of population
genetics (the study of gene behaviour in populations). Polymorphism
refers to the existence of two or more different gene variations at the
same place or locus in the human chromosome, giving rise to different
physical characteristics. Jones (1981) has given a description of
Latter's Index which used data on 18 polymorphic gene loci from 180
different human populations from six classically described racial groups
(European, African, Indian, East Asian, New World and Oceania) to give a
measure of the proportion of genes which two randomly chosen individuals
had in common.

The differences between classically described racial groups (10% of
all genetic variation) were only slightly greater than those which
existed between nations (6% of all genetic variation) and both of these
were small compared to the genetic differences within a local population
(84% of all genetic variation). Jones concluded that the human species
could not be divided into a number of discrete `racial' entities on
the grounds either of genetics or physical appearances. Though, of
course, there is genetic variation, there is no major genetic divergence
between racial groups. Mankind is rather homogenous, which is what is
implied by the term `species'.

I stress, the argument presented here is not that genetic or
hereditary factors are always unimportant in the explanation of disease,
but that no genetic or biological markers have ever been shown to
reliably differentiate groups of human beings on `racial' grounds.
Rejection of the `race' concept refers to ideas about
classification, not variation (Kohn, 1995).

Ethnicity and Culture

So, what about the terms `ethnicity' and `culture'?
Culture can be viewed as the `process of cumulative adaptation of a
social group to a particular environment' (Shannon, 1994) or as a
`set of beliefs and ideas that a group draws on to identify and manage
the problems of their everyday lives' (Kelleher, 1996). An `ethnic
group' refers to a culturally defined group which may include
common geographic origin, language and religious faith as well as shared
traditions, values, symbols, literature, music and food preferences
(Polednak, 1989). Like race, the concept of ethnicity can be mobilised
for political purposes (as we have seen in the former Yugoslavia), and
the development of shared political values and traditions can, in turn,
shape ethnic identification. So ethnicity is a socio-political variable
defined on cultural and other criteria, whereas race is a
socio-political variable masquerading as a biological variable (Witzig,
1996). Ethnicity does have its problems as an epidemiological variable
(Senior & Bhopal, 1994), but these are the problems inherent in
defining social variables. Ethnicity remains a meaningful and complex
social variable with which we can potentially deal. However, continual
reference to `race' as a biological rather than sociopolitical
variable obscures the importance of other variables for which
`race' is merely a proxy, such as income, education, housing and
discrimination. Social disadvantage is thereby transformed into
immutable biological difference (Osborne & Felt, 1992;
Lillie-Blanton & LaVeist, 1996).

The Public Health Discourse on Ethnicity and Race

So what about the public health community in Australia and New
Zealand? How do they talk, what terms do they use? I have taken the
opportunity to review the first issue of the Australian (later
Australian and New Zealand) Journal of Public Health for each of the
years from 1992 to 1999. There were a total of 130 data-based articles,
excluding editorials, opinion pieces, published orations and reviews. 55
articles (42%) had some mention of a variable relevant to ethnicity or
race, compared to one United States series where the proportion was just
over 50% (Ahdieh & Hahn, 1996). Ten of the 55 Australian articles
dealt with indigenous groups only, six others dealt with other
specifically named ethnic groups and five others described study
populations that included indigenous and other ethnic groups together.
Half of the articles (28 or 51%) included as a descriptor of the study
population either the category `non-English speaking background' or
`country of birth'. But to what underlying concept did the measured
variables relate? In only three articles was the word `race'
mentioned. Ethnicity was the presumed concept that underlay the variable
in the other articles but the word appeared in only nineteen of those
articles. Aside from the papers devoted to indigenous populations, the
`ethnicity' variable was most often mentioned in describing the
sample only to be forgotten in the analysis. It was rarely analysed as
one factor among many. One can conclude that the term 'race'
has all but disappeared from the Australian and New Zealand public
health literature, in contrast to the American literature (Ahdieh &
Hahn, 1996; Jones et al., 1991), but even in the American literature
there is rarely ever an explicit definition of race given (Williams,
1994). The term `ethnicity' is also under-theorised; presumed
related variables such as `country of birth' are mentioned without
any attempt to explain or justify their relevance to the problem
studied. In other words, the underlying hypothesis that triggered the
decision to collect data on ethnicity is almost never stated (Osborne
& Feit, 1992; Kaufman & Cooper, 1995).

Abandoning `Race'

Some public health professionals have argued that the concept of
`race', although imprecise, may have some limited usefulness in
physical anthropology, clinical medicine, epidemiology and public
health, primarily as a way of generating explanatory hypotheses to be
further tested and also as a means to target high-risk groups (Polednak,
1989; Feinleib, 1992). Most public health commentators have advised that
race and ethnicity be better classified and defined. For example, Senior
& Bhopal (1994) called for the abandonment of ethnicity as a synonym
for race, but stopped short of calling for the abandonment of race
itself. Guidelines on the use of ethnic, racial and cultural descriptors
in published research (Anonymous, 1996) similarly stated that race has
limited biological validity; they did not state it has no validity.

I argue more radically that the race word is redundant and should
be dispensed with altogether. Although under-theorised in practice, the
concept of ethnicity has the potential to generate explanatory
hypotheses and serve to target high-risk groups. It is an explicitly
socio-cultural variable, and should therefore be adopted in preference
to `race' in both our everyday language and our systems of
classification. Race as a concept or category does not have any
additional explanatory or strategic value above that of ethnicity; when
stripped of its biological basis, race becomes a socio-cultural variable
indistinguishable from ethnicity.

Adopting and Adapting Ethnicity

The adoption of ethnicity as the preferred term in health and
social research in particular, and academia in general, will be enhanced
if the terms of its use are agreed upon. Academics need to standardise
the means by which ethnic groups are categorised, whilst acknowledging
the fluid boundaries and social construction of those categories, and
the contested and sometimes contradictory nature of ethnicity itself. It
is known that people often change their reported ethnicity between
surveys, such as between the census and the post-enumeration survey
taken six weeks later (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997). This
phenomenon is also seen in the US (Hahn, 1992; McKenney & Bennett,
1994) and in the UK (Chaturvedi & McKeigue, 1994). This variability
does not mean that the concept is not useful, rather that analysis and
interpretation need to incorporate the context in which the data was
collected.

In order to maximise the reliability of the categorisation, we
should encourage people to self-identify as a member of an ethnic group
rather than be identified by others on spurious grounds. In the special
conditions of a national census, care is taken to standardise the
question asked of respondents and special efforts made to train census
interviewers. The collection of routine data is done much less well. For
example, at the time of hospital admission, admission clerks often make
assumptions about ethnicity based on visual observation, rather than
allowing people the opportunity to self-identify (Morrow &
Barraclough, 1991). Special programs to train admission clerks can
address this problem.

To name or identify an ethnic group should not be an end in itself,
however, but the beginning of an enquiry tied to a specific hypothesis.
Ethnicity data should only be collected with a particular hypothesis or
purpose in mind. For example the term Asian refers to such a
heterogenous group of people that it is of little use in testing
hypotheses or formulating health policy (Bhopal et al., 1991). When
ethnicity data is collected, data on potential confounding factors such
as social class, income or education should also be collected. Depending
on the specific purpose of the collection, other variables may be
relevant (e.g. diet, language or religion). For example, if improving
access to services is the purpose, it would be relevant to collect
information on language, and cultural and religious practices, as well
as self-reported ethnicity. Exploring ethnicity in such a way would
allow us to acknowledge and approach diversity in a meaningful manner,
whilst not forgetting the impact of racism and social disadvantage.

I stress that it is possible, at least in academic circles, to
effect a change in discourse. Williams (1994) pointed out that journal
editors are in a powerful gatekeeping position because they can insist,
as a matter of policy, that researchers justify the inclusion of an
ethnicity/race variable and report the means by which it was assessed
(either through self-report, proxy report, record review or direct
observation). Bhopal et al. (1997) asked UK-based editors of a broad
range of medical journals about their practices, opinions and intentions
in relation to terminology in ethnicity and health research. Ten (36%)
had considered the issue of terminology in relation to ethnic
minorities, one (4%) had a written policy and five (18%) had an agreed
but unwritten policy. Most recognised the importance of the issue and
welcomed guidance to resolve the problem of inappropriate terminology in
ethnicity and health research. Bhopal et al. (1997) recommended that the
World Association of Medical Editors take the lead in drawing up
authoritative guidelines for editors.

Why Race Persists

The argument presented here is not new. Indeed, UNESCO recommended
against the usage of the term `race' as long ago as 1950. So why
has the term `race' persisted in common usage?

First, because `people look different'. Skin colour looks like
it should be a big deal, but it is in fact a minor physical
characteristic.

Second, because it is a term loaded with social and metaphorical
associations, which can be positive or negative, depending on the
context. Just as it can be used to stereotype and discriminate, it can
also signify, say for some Aboriginal people, their uniqueness and
survival -- `I am proud of being a member of the Aboriginal race'.
Lattas (1993) prefers the term `racism' to ethnicity since it
`captures the way power and hatred are inscribed in bodies and the
policing of bodies'. It is not clear what he specifically thinks of
the term `race' though he adds disparagingly in a footnote
`Academics like to use the term ethnicity because it carries the
connotation of culture detached from bodies and biologies [...]'.
Whilst acknowledging the short term symbolic and strategic impact of
positive statements about identity, I would argue that it is
counterproductive in the long term to propagate a terminology that is
not scientifically or biologically rational and may symbolically
underlie much `racial' hatred.

Third, race and racism are central to an understanding of
Australian history and how the transformation to today's
multi-ethnic and multicultural society has been managed (Castles et al.,
1988). Pettman (1992) writes that just as the ideas of scientific racism
were used to rationalise Aboriginal dispossession prior to and after
Federation, so the Australian national political project has been
`masculinist, racist and Anglo-supremacist' from the beginning. The
reappearance of a chronic deep-seated racism in Australia should not,
therefore, be a surprise in circumstances where people are looking to
include, exclude or scapegoat others for whatever purpose.

Is a Change in Terminology a Strategy Worth Pursuing?

It is not possible to apportion the contribution that the belief in
a biological basis for race makes to the widespread phenomenon of
racism. As we have seen, there are complex social, political and
cultural factors that contribute to the persistence of racism, which is
embedded within medical systems (Esmail & Carnall, 1997) as well as
in the wider culture. Racism is often the invisible and unmeasured
variable that explains differences attributed to social class, poverty
or `race' itself (Peterson et al., 1997).

However, the strong historical relationship described previously,
between the development of the biological concept of `race' and the
development of nation-states that see themselves as scientifically
rational, at least admits the possibility that `race and racism'
would lose some of its allure if seen to be scientifically invalid. The
process of de-emphasising `race' may have started already if the
Australian public health literature referred to above is any reflection.
There is little evidence, however, of any parallel challenge to the
`race' concept in the popular media. A cursory examination of the
media coverage of the possibility of a `race election' in 1998
suggests that racism is portrayed as undesirable while the scientific
status of `race' goes unchallenged.

A recent program run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics
demonstrates the potential link between adopting ethnicity as a crucial
public health variable, and challenging the societal assumptions that
underpin its use. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health
Information Plan (AHMAC & AIHW, 1997) identified the need to collect
more complete and accurate data on indigenous people entering hospital.
A crucial barrier to such data is that hospital staff fail to ask the
question `Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin?'
either because they assume the ethnicity of the client, or are
embarrassed to ask. The campaign, targeted at both hospital staff and
people attending hospitals, includes a poster showing three people of
different physical appearance. The accompanying words say `Any of these
people could be of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin. To find
out we need to ask.' Overall, the campaign highlights the need for
self-identification (a key component of ethnicity as opposed to race),
and the potential to challenge and change attitudes in this sensitive
area.

The possibility of language change contributing to a change in the
dominant discourse and in the long term to a lessening of prejudice is
one strategy for social change worth exploring. The women's
movement has been strong in its emphasis on non-sexist terminology
whilst not claiming that a change in terminology will, in itself,
eliminate sexism. The abandonment of the race concept in the health and
social research field, and in academia in general, will eventually have
an influence on social commentators in the media, who if not academics
themselves, certainly rely heavily on academic sources. Public attitudes
may also then change over time, though the strength of attachment to the
race concept should not be underestimated. Warwick Anderson (1997) has
described his experience of being labelled a race traitor when
describing, in a public gathering, the historical flexibility of the
categorisation of race. His response was to point out that one could not
betray something that did not exist. He also called for scientists to
enter the national debate on race, and this article is a partial
response to that call.

Conclusion

It has been argued in this article that `race' is not just a
poorly defined concept, it is an anti-scientific one whose use is no
longer justified. There are, of course, real ethnic and cultural
differences and certain situations of extreme group disadvantage (e.g.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia) that justify
government policy that seeks to accommodate those differences and
redress those disadvantages through improving access to education,
housing and employment.

To continue to talk about `race' instead of about the more
complex issues of ethnicity and culture and their relationship to
identity (Jordan, 1985), harks back to an Australia when social policy
(particularly in relation to Aboriginal affairs and migration) was
constructed on the notion of `racial essences'. Humphrey McQueen
(1994) has pointed out that `although talk about Aboriginal
"blood" is nonsense, blood retains its place as a key metaphor
in the rhetoric of prejudice'. In 1994, National Party leaders
demanded that the official definition of Aboriginal person be narrowed.
They wanted only `full bloods' and `half castes' to qualify
for government benefits. Such attitudes survive, in part, because the
concept of `race' survives. The public policy of multiculturalism
that aims to manage `the consequences of cultural diversity in the
interests of the individual and society as a whole' (Rice, 1997)
would in fact be strengthened by a deeper appreciation of both ethnic
diversity and human unity freed from artificial racial divisions.

Before I am accused of the dreaded `political correctness'
(Morris-Suzuki, 1996), let me point out that this article is intended as
a contribution to a hopefully thoughtful debate about the usefulness and
limits of categorisation and the relationships that exist between
language, attitudes and public policy. There is no wish to censor free
speech, rather a desire that our speech be more exact and truer to the
real-life circumstances and possibilities of the human condition. To
become race and colour-blind, whilst remaining sensitive to ethnicity
and culture seems to me to be a worthwhile goal.

We should not fool ourselves, however, that changing terminology is
all that matters. `Ethnic cleansing' is as hateful as `racial
cleansing'. `Essentialism' tied to any terminology is a real
danger. We make no progress if we eliminate the ideology of racial
essentialism, only to substitute an ideology of genetic, ethnic or
cultural determinism.

Abandoning race as a concept leaves racism without a logical basis.
This is not to say that racism will immediately disappear, since logic
does not explain its persistence in the late twentieth century, but
racism may diminish over time. Castles et al. (1990) offer a vision of
Australia as a communal and inclusive society that transcends notions of
the nation-state, nationalism and racism. The battle against racism in
Australia will require a mix of strategies ranging from the personal to
the political, and the strategy offered in this article is but one
contribution.

Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank my friend, Sam Heard, for
challenging my own understanding of `race' some years ago. Also
Tess Lea, Peter Markey, Karen Martin, Kerry-Ann O'Grady, David
Thomas and other friends and colleagues who have debated these issues
with me over the last few years and who may still disagree with the
viewpoint offered here. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers who
helped to clarify the argument presented.

References

Ahdieh, L. and Hahn, R.A. (1996) `Use of the terms
"race", "ethnicity" and "national
origins": a review of articles in the American Journal of Public
Health, 1980-1989' Ethnicity and Health 1 (1), 95-98.

Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council and Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare. (1997) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Health Information Plan ... This time, let's make it
happen, Canberra: AIHW(catalogue no. HWI 12).

Bhopal, R., Phillimore P. and Kohli, H. (1991) `Inappropriate use
of the term "Asian": an obstacle to ethnicity and health
research' J Public Health Med 13 (4), 244-246.